Did Anyone Watch Micro Men?

[may88]

Yep i recorded this, have watched it twice already, its not just historically interesting to watch its bloody funny too! My favourite quote was from Sir Clive "I WILL NOT BE REMEMBERED AS CLIVE SINCLAIR, THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU JET SET FUCKING WILLY!

No! That was Matthew Smith

 

[Monk]

Yep i recorded this, have watched it twice already, its not just historically interesting to watch its bloody funny too! My favourite quote was from Sir Clive "I WILL NOT BE REMEMBERED AS CLIVE SINCLAIR, THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU JET SET FUCKING WILLY!

No! That was Matthew Smith

Besides, Sir Clive went on to be remembered by most (at least, most people who still remember him) for the C5... personally, I'd rather be remembered for Jet Set Willy!

 

[Asmo]

My Cousin won one of his LED watches back in the day. An Uncle of mine got one of his first 'Microvision' Pocket TVs, which made me green with envy. When he popped his clogs years later I managed to bag the TV. Still have it.

 

[jaycee900]

Yes i know it was Matthew Smith, but the quote was from the film, regarding the fact Sir Clive didn't want the Spectrum to be known for just a games computer, where as Acorn were aiming in that direction and Sinclair the other....turns out neither got their wish!

 

[Asmo]

Heheh - I remember they actively discouraged their existing -gaming- customer base from being associated with the QL.
At a computer trade show I was at (coincidentally, manning an Enterprise 64 stand) the QL area of the Sinclair stand was cordoned off, and unless you were a suit (no kids allowed) they wouldn't allow you to come in and poke around with the hardware.

 

[mvickers03]

I wish I would have grown up with spectrum and bbc's I was a little later than that (amiga/atari) I have played a few speccy games, not many though, just the major ones like manic miner and jet set willy. as for bbc I played absolutly none!! shocking I know but i'll give it a propper bash when I get my panda

I have seen a bbc in action once and it had a interface with menu's for games/utils and such, there seemed to be lots of stuff built in, but when I start up a bbc emulator it just sits waiting for a command to boot from a disk.. is there an OS that needs installing??

I watched the programme last night it was really good.. only one day left to watch now.

 

[Monk]

I have seen a bbc in action once and it had a interface with menu's for games/utils and such, there seemed to be lots of stuff built in, but when I start up a bbc emulator it just sits waiting for a command to boot from a disk.. is there an OS that needs installing??

There's a bunch of room for interpretation there, so bear with me.

The OS for BBCs come as ROMs. Programming languages (like the buil;t-in BASIC) and filing system (such as the Disc Filing System) were in seperate ROMs. As there were various different BBC machines over the years, there were different ROMs. Up to (but excluding) the Archimedes range (which I don't THINK ever had "BBC" emblazoned upon them) the "default" was to boot to the "BASIC" ROM (which was actually pretty good for its day). Either the Tape Filing System or the Disc Filing System (depending on what was installed) would tend to be the default FS, although there were other options (the "Econent Filing System", for example, was the Acorn/BBC networking filing system).

However, that was the factory default. The machines could also be configured to "boot to" either a FS ROM (in which case it would look for boot media on that device) or to an application ROM (these were technically "marked" as Language ROMs but could be a wordprocessor, or a spreadsheet, and so on - or even a circuit/PCB design program!).

Obviously, to get a BBC Emulator up and running you'd want a complete set of ROMs installed int eh right place - OS, FS and BASIC (or Forth or BCPL or...). I THINK that some BBC Emulators actually come with a set of ROMS you can use - BeebEm would be worth checking out to be sure. IIRC the DFS included isn't Acrons one but the Watford Disc Filing System (which was actually slightly more advanced).

In addition to all that, if you're not talking about an Archimedes or some such, then BBC Micros came without mice - a hole plugged most frequently with the "AMX Mouse". AMX supplied their mice with a range of GUI based software, almost certainly including a simple GEM-like interface at one point (I'm sorry I am a bit wooly on this a sI wrote my own Gem-like interface to act as front-end to my program collection). I have no idea if the AMX Mouse ROM is available, or if the BBC Emulators emulate the User Port (where the mouse plugged in) well enough to emulate a mouse as I tend to use quite a limited subset of BBC Micro programs nowadays and haven't investigated that aspect

 

[mvickers03]

I have seen a bbc in action once and it had a interface with menu's for games/utils and such, there seemed to be lots of stuff built in, but when I start up a bbc emulator it just sits waiting for a command to boot from a disk.. is there an OS that needs installing??

There's a bunch of room for interpretation there, so bear with me.

The OS for BBCs come as ROMs. Programming languages (like the buil;t-in BASIC) and filing system (such as the Disc Filing System) were in seperate ROMs. As there were various different BBC machines over the years, there were different ROMs. Up to (but excluding) the Archimedes range (which I don't THINK ever had "BBC" emblazoned upon them) the "default" was to boot to the "BASIC" ROM (which was actually pretty good for its day). Either the Tape Filing System or the Disc Filing System (depending on what was installed) would tend to be the default FS, although there were other options (the "Econent Filing System", for example, was the Acorn/BBC networking filing system).

However, that was the factory default. The machines could also be configured to "boot to" either a FS ROM (in which case it would look for boot media on that device) or to an application ROM (these were technically "marked" as Language ROMs but could be a wordprocessor, or a spreadsheet, and so on - or even a circuit/PCB design program!).

Obviously, to get a BBC Emulator up and running you'd want a complete set of ROMs installed int eh right place - OS, FS and BASIC (or Forth or BCPL or...). I THINK that some BBC Emulators actually come with a set of ROMS you can use - BeebEm would be worth checking out to be sure. IIRC the DFS included isn't Acrons one but the Watford Disc Filing System (which was actually slightly more advanced).

In addition to all that, if you're not talking about an Archimedes or some such, then BBC Micros came without mice - a hole plugged most frequently with the "AMX Mouse". AMX supplied their mice with a range of GUI based software, almost certainly including a simple GEM-like interface at one point (I'm sorry I am a bit wooly on this a sI wrote my own Gem-like interface to act as front-end to my program collection). I have no idea if the AMX Mouse ROM is available, or if the BBC Emulators emulate the User Port (where the mouse plugged in) well enough to emulate a mouse as I tend to use quite a limited subset of BBC Micro programs nowadays and haven't investigated that aspect

Ahhh that makes sence. so the O.S, word processor, games e.t.c. that i saw were stored on a ROM or set of ROMs, and the ROM or ROM image isnt in my emulator!. Thanks for the emulator but im not going to mess untill i have my pandora(i assume beebem is an emulator and not a ROM set).. its just not the same sitting infront of the pc as it would be to play in my hands. to play old bbc micro games on a pc seems more of a chore than anything else. sitting in bed flicking through very very old roms will definatly be very very fun!

Thanks for the infomation

 

[Monk]

Ahhh that makes sence. so the O.S, word processor, games e.t.c. that i saw were stored on a ROM or set of ROMs, and the ROM or ROM image isnt in my emulator!. Thanks for the emulator but im not going to mess untill i have my pandora(i assume beebem is an emulator and not a ROM set).. its just not the same sitting infront of the pc as it would be to play in my hands. to play old bbc micro games on a pc seems more of a chore than anything else. sitting in bed flicking through very very old roms will definatly be very very fun!

Thanks for the infomation

No worries, though if I made sense I was probably doing something wrong.

While games can (and sometimes were) stored in ROMs, it is more typical for them to have been on audio casette or floppy disc (unless someone cracked them to copy to their hard drive, or put in ROM). So you probably need the OS ROM, the correct FS ROM, possibly the BASIC ROM and then a collection of FS images (disc images or tape images). Thinking about it, you could have been seeing one of the legit collections (like one of the "Serious Sam" range of collected games) but the overall message - sans technicalities - is pretty much "yeah, that!"

 

[mvickers03]

It seems i understood it better than you, cheers either way

 

[ashdjones]

Saw this again on repeat over Christmas. I agree with Craig that it's all still very relevant. Our Pandora is definately a BBC Micro to Nintendo's Spectrum "Its like we thought, done on the the cheap. Very clever.".

Clive Sinclair Talks Pandora

 

[hobbyman II]

all those BBC micros thrown away, Imagine what you could do with a Bewolf cluster of those things :lol: , (prolly manage to just about do what you do with your Iphone or n900)

 

[ashdjones]

all those BBC micros thrown away, Imagine what you could do with a Bewolf cluster of those things :lol: , (prolly manage to just about do what you do with your Iphone or n900)

Multiple universe Elite?

 

[ndbsolar]

all those BBC micros thrown away, Imagine what you could do with a Bewolf cluster of those things :lol: , (prolly manage to just about do what you do with your Iphone or n900)

Multiple universe Elite?

Do not tease me with the thought of such a blissful game. If only that would happen...